NCJ Number
250998
Date Published
December 2012
Length
40 pages
Annotation
The U.S. Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) presents criteria and standards that must be met for a Child Abduction Response Team (CART) to become certified.
Abstract
In 2005, OJJDP launched the CART Program training as part of its AMBER Alert Training and Technical Assistance Initiative. Like AMBER Alerts, a CART is a critical tool law enforcement agencies use in providing an effective and efficient response to a missing-child incident in which a child is believed to be endangered or abducted. The effectiveness and acceptance of the CART initiative by law enforcement professionals has made CART an integral part of a community's comprehensive child recovery strategy. In its pursuit of excellence in CART structure and operations, OJJDP created the Child Abduction Response Team Certification Program. Leading subject matter experts, practitioners, policymakers, and other child protective specialists were enlisted to develop operational standards of excellence and evidence-based best practices related to the recovery of missing children. Using this manual, a jurisdiction's CART can voluntarily achieve certification, which means it meets operational standards of excellence and evidence-based best practices in the recovery of missing children. This second edition of the Certification Manual incorporates new standards and compliance requirements for certification. Certification now requires that a CART comply with 47 standards that cover 12 topic operational areas.